HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE PHILIPPINES

The Philippines' Constitution protects human rights in order to ensure that

people in the Philippines can live peacefully and with dignity, free from
abuse by any individuals or institutions, including the state. Article III of the
Philippine Constitution, as well as the United Nations' International Bill of
Human Rights, to which the Philippines is a signatory, define the concept
and practice of human rights in the Philippines.

In the context of the Philippines, the term "human rights" primarily refers to
(but is not limited to) a person's civil and political rights while residing in the
country.

Human rights are a legitimate set of demands that apply to all members of
the human race and are not restricted to any one group or citizenship. Only
being a member of the human race qualifies one for these rights. Human
rights are universally justifiable because they apply to the entire human
race, regardless of location, unlike region-specific conventions of
international law (such as the European Convention on Human Rights and
the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic,
Social, and Cultural Rights).

HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES

Torture

- Torture was being conducted by the Communist Party of the Philippines-New

Peoples Army, according to numerous sources.

Transnational Advocacy

- International advocacy organizations work to advance the issues of

Mindanao, Philippines-based environmental and human rights
activists. Transnational organizations may engage local actors,
stakeholders, and underprivileged community members in their
"participatory" activism by inviting them to participate in policy
decisions. Human rights advocates want to draw attention to
societal problems facing Indigenous peoples in regard to the
 Lumad. According to Duraippah et al., optimum participation is
attained when the demands of Indigenous peoples are highlighted
and the concepts of transparency and empowerment—through the
teaching of transnational actors through local actors—are used.
Social power demonstrates how Lumad people are excluded from
political decisions, which in turn exacerbates current human rights
problems. Since social power is the real desire to achieve real
control over livelihoods and the laws that govern them, power in
this context is an umbrella term. Since Indigenous peoples did not
hold social power as of 1998, online organizing helps to arm
members of their community organizing network with knowledge to
balance the natural power imbalance.
Because Lumad peoples depend on the natural resources of their
ancestral lands for their livelihoods, when they are displaced or
forced to evacuate, they are left without the means to feed
themselves and their families. Advocacy organizations raise money
to help Lumad villages and their most ardent form of protest.

War On Drugs

(Visions of peace amidst a human rights crisis: War on

drugs in Colombia and the Philippines)

One of the most frequently used but hotly debated notions in modern
politics is peace. What exactly is peace? This article, which examines the
divisive discourses of peace in a society plagued by pervasive drug use
and trafficking, is motivated by that broad analytic enquiry. The basic
conundrum of this study, which focuses on the illegal drug problem in
Colombia and the Philippines, consists of two essential inquiries: How can
state leaders justify their respective "war on drugs"? In light of the illegal
drug crisis, how can they develop and discursively convey values of
peace? This essay contrasts the Philippine drug war during the Duterte
government with the post-9/11 Colombian drug war (2002–2010). (2016–
2019), especially in terms of the way their presidents' administrations
define "peace" in relation to addressing the drug problem. The research
looks at several peace discourses, explores how they link to global
discourses on peace and drugs, and emphasizes how and when such
peace discourses represent the material distributive problems in different
nations. The main contention is that the Uribe and Duterte administrations
primarily used the idea of peace as justification for greater state repression,
a more aggressive criminalization of the drug problem, and a resistance on
the part of the government to adopt a public health strategy to combat the
spread of illicit drugs.